Contents

Attacks and abilities

Both Emperors:

Heal Brother — Whenever the twins get within 60 yards of one another, they will spam heal each other for 30000 health/tick. Keep them far apart.

Twin Teleport — Every 30–40 seconds, the two twins will switch places, visible by a blue glow around their feet. The twins will be rooted for about 2 seconds after they teleport before they start attacking again. There is a complete aggro wipe, and the Emperors will attack the closest player to them, who will receive a large amount of threat after the 2 second root runs out.

Berserk — After 15 minutes, the Emperors will go berserk dramatically increasing damage and wiping the raid. Note that they still can be downed during berserk if they have very low health left.

Combined Health — The Emperors share percentage health. Damage to one emperor hurts the other emperor as well. HP of Vek'nilash is about 1.6M, HP of Vek'lor is about 1M. Therefore 100k damage done to Vek'lor equates to 160k damage done to Vek'nilash. This allows them to die simultaneously, but not in fact have the same real HP. Only their HP percentages go down simultaneously. This causes casters to have a greater effect in this fight than melee damage dealers.

Explode Bugs — grow to 200% size, and their tentacles begin to spark. They explode 3sec after they are triggered and inflict between 2813 to 3187 fire damage.

Mutate Bugs — grow to 400% size, gain 300% health, melee for 1800% damage, as well as turn hostile. They must be tanked/killed since they otherwise stay mutated for 4 minutes and melee for 1000+ damage per hit.

Positioning

Strategy

Raid setup

Two tank teams: Each team consists of: 1 Warrior, 2 Warlocks (one for Blood Pact, the other for tanking), a Paladin/Shaman and 4-5 Healers. One team covers the left side, the other takes the right.

A bug-hunter team: 3 Mages, 2 Warriors and a Paladin/Shaman/Druid for healing.

The Magical Emperor is tanked by a warlock (Shadow damage), the Physical by a warrior (physical damage). After each teleport the character closest to the given Emperor will get aggro. In every case we want this to be the warrior. However:

On a switch from physical to magical the tanking warlock will immediately after the teleport begin to chain-cast searing pain on the magical Emperor in order to get aggro. Both, the warrior and warlock keep a healthy range to their Emperor to avoid Arcane Bursts, triggered if any character is within melee range. The more range they can get the better, as it helps their healers to avoid all Blizzards and exploding Bugs. Ideally all tanking happens on a line orthogonal to the respective wall an Emperor is tanked against.

Warlock tanks should use Curse of Doom as well as Searing Pain to pull aggro. Excluding partial resists, the damage done by Curse of Doom is easily enough to pull aggro from a warrior. Approximately 10–15 seconds after the fight starts, or after a teleport, the active warlock tank should cast this Curse on Vek'lor. The exact timing requires practice, but it far more effective than just spamming Searing Pain alone.

Shadow Ward should be activated before the teleport warning is received. This means the first bolt can be absorbed, and Shadow Ward will have cooled down during the tanking period.

Once the warlock has aggro Vek'lor will move towards him. It is critical that the warlock be alert for this, and move back slightly. If the warlock does not react fast enough, Vek'lor will Arcane Blast the warlock tank, seriously disrupting the positioning. If handled correctly, Vek'lor will remain well outside healing range, and the warrior tank can move in along the wall behind him. This is close to where the warrior will tank after the teleport.

On a switch from magical to physical the warrior has to be closest character in the proximity of the Emperor. If he gets uppercut and knocked away, he has to come back in position before the teleport so the warlock can live (who would otherwise not survive a Physical Emperor's hit). Once the warrior has aggro he positions himself with his back to the wall, so he doesn't go flying when uppercut and thus out of range of heals. The tanking warlock just waits his turn again.

DPS:

DPS is split in two, bug-hunters and boss-DPS:

The bug-hunters take care of all Mutated Scarabs and Scorpions on the Physical Emperor side to keep them from killing the Healers.

The boss-DPS bounces from side to side following their Emperor (warriors, hunters and rogues on the Physical, warlocks, mages on the Magical) The melee DPS have to take much care that they run away from their Emperors in due time (5 seconds) before the next teleport so the warrior gets initial aggro on the new Emperor. A rogue getting aggro easily messes up the positioning and healing-chains. Also, standing close to the Magical Emperor triggers Arcane Blasts which can wipe all the melee DPS in seconds.

Switch early, don't test your luck.

After the first teleport, DPS can start.

Healing:

Healing the warlock-tank is easily done by a single priest or druid and thus provides a ~25 sec timeframe during Vek'lor (Magical Emperor) where healers are at ease to pick up loose ends, regen mana and heal some DPS.

Healing the warrior during Vek'nilash (Physical Emperor) time is tricky as he will frequently get hit by a sequence of big blows in very short time. It is necessary to constantly channel heals, keep HoTs up and shield after Unbalancing Strikes and Uppercuts. 3 priests chaincasting Heal 2 (augmented by +heal) and constant Renew does most of the work. Paladins/shamans and druids are used for the gaps in between. Starting to cast when there is already a health deficit (reactive healing)is not sufficient.

Healers will be moving a lot in this fight between their positions for the respective Emperor (further away in a safe spot on Vek'lor to avoid Blizzards and closer on Vek'nilash as the warrior to be healed is near the wall --> see illustration. In the event of Vek'lor moving unintentionally close to the warlock tank, all healers on the side have to react quickly and increase their range to maximum so they can avoid all blizzards.

Outpost: Each side places one designated healer (best geared priest ideally, maybe accompanied by a paladin/shaman) in the outpost position (10 yds away from the warlock so they don't get both hit by the same blizzard). His responsibility is to stay in range of the warrior and heal him during Vek'lor. This allows the main healer group to get to their safe-position (out of blizzard range in the middle) immediately after the teleport. Should the outpost-healer take damage from a blizzard or exploding bug, the main healer group takes care of it. The outpost healer also covers the first damage on the warrior when he takes aggro on a switch back to Vek'nilash until the main healer group gets back in close-position.

Druids coordinate their innervates and be prepared to cast Rebirth on warlock and warrior.

Twins at 85

At level 85 this encounter becomes many times easier. It can be easily 2-manned, with health pools over 100k and the extent of self healing all classes have. It is easiest done with 1 melee and 1 caster. Tank them on their platforms, make sure you keep dots up, when the Emperors switch platforms, they will circle back to their original platform (due to the aggro generated by the DOTS), gaining 1 or 2 heals on the way. Reposition them on the platforms and continue DPS. Once either of the Emperors die, one of two things will happen.
1: The opposite Emperor also dies.
2: The opposite Emperor is reduced to <10% health. And with no healing, it is very easy to finish him off.

Notes

Instead of using warlocks to tank the caster Emperor, a warrior can be used. The warrior should stand close enough after a teleport phase to receive initial aggro, and then move out of melee range to stop Arcane Explosions. By doing so, however, you can only DPS the physical Emperor. This has the extreme disadvantage of the warrior generating very little aggro relative to the healer aggro generated keeping him up from shadowbolts, however this can be countered by filling that warriors group with healers and having him spam Battle Shout. This will easily overcompensate for the healing aggro. An advantage to this method is it makes dealing with the bugs much easier, as that becomes the only job the casters have, and mutated bugs will be burned down in seconds.

Another alternate tanking strategy is tanks in full HP gear just stand with their backs to the wall and never move. When the Magical Emperor comes in they just stand there and eat arcane explosions. Arcane explosions are slower than shadow bolts and sometimes he even melee attacks for small damage. The cast time for Arcane Explosions are slow and they are fairly easy to heal through. This provides the benefit of not having to move at all. The healers need to watch for exploding bugs and blizzard which will require extra heals on the tanks. This is a good alternative if you find the Magical Emperor would chase the tank when moving out during a transition.

Demoralizing Shout is your greatest friend in this fight. As with other bosses such as Broodlord Lashlayer, attack power calculations are given significant weighting when used with certain strikes (ie. Broodlord's Mortal Strike, Vek'nilash's Unbalancing Strike). However, when using Demo Shout, you need to be careful not to aggro additional neutral bugs. As with other debuffs, a tank is able to demo shout before the emperors port, and the debuff will stay on after the port.

Death Knights will have the most trouble sustaining DPS during this fight because their attacks are a combination of Melee and Magic damage.

Another alternate strategy to try when the Emperors keep running at each other and healing each other, is to stack all the dps on one side, and have them stay there. The dps rate will drop, but this strategy has worked.

Another interesting fact is that while Emperor Vek'nilash is immune to most magic damage, he is not immune to Holy school attacks.

SpellAlert (or an appropriate local spell announcing mod) is a MUST for everyone. This will warn you when nearby bugs are about to explode. You need to be constantly cautious of exploding/mutating bugs at all times and avoid them.

When you find yourself underneath a Blizzard, run out! Scrolling Combat Text gives a warning on incoming Blizzard. To survive the tick, kings (and frost ward if you are a mage) are of great help.

Vek'nilash will hit the melee DPS with random knockbacks, so be sure to bandage/potion when necessary.

Blizzard will be cast only when multiple players stands in the vicinity of the caster twin (40 yards range). Be sure the healers are not in 40 yds range!

The Twin Emperors share the movements of a Night Elf male.

Quotes

Intro:

The massive floating eyeball in the center of the chamber turns its gaze upon you. You stand before a god.

Emperor Vek'lor yells: Only flesh and bone. Mortals are such easy prey...

Trivia

The Twin Emperors were given an updated model with the release of Burning Crusade, granting them shoulder pads. Why Blizzard chose to update their models, just as they were about to become obsolete, is unknown.